M.I.A. Hunter: Miami War Zone

by Mertz, Stephen

  Williams shoved Rosales and Allbnght aside. "What about your friend?"

  "We didn't find him."

  "That's another thing," Williams growled. "You're interfering with an official government investigation into the disappearance of one of its agents. You're placing him in grave danger!"

  "What investigation?" Stone snapped.

  "Uh . . . what do you mean?" Williams stammered.

  "I mean what investigation?" Stone looked at Bass. "Can you tell me? What is the D.E.A. doing to find and rescue Wofford?"

  Bass looked at the ground. "Well, we. . . uh, we are pursuing several avenues of possibility."

  Hog choked back a laugh.

  "That's exactly what I mean," Stone snapped. "You're 'pursuing several avenues of possibility.' Bullshit. I've heard that lie a hundred times, in other circumstances. What it means is that you've written Jack Wofford off the list. As far as you're concerned, he's history. Disappeared is as good as dead. You don't care what happens to him now, just as long as he doesn't make the agency look bad."

  "That's a lie," Williams snarled. "We are concerned about Wofford and his safety. Our agents make the agency what it is."

  "Tell that to his wife," Stone said. "I know it would be a comfort to her right now."

  "I think the man has a point," Allbright said. "I think we all know what really happened here. After all, we were on our way here, too. It's just another action in the drug war, just another action like we've seen too many of."

  Rosales agreed. "I don't think Stone and his team are guilty of what went down here. This is retaliation for whatever occurred earlier tonight. But we can't allow ourselves to sink to this level."

  "Why not?" Stone asked.

  They all looked at him.

  Stone glared back. "That's right. I said, 'Why not?' What good has your way done so far? I'll tell you. It hasn't done any good. There are more drugs in Florida now than ever before. Miami gets painted up like a tourist town, and the chamber of commerce wants it that way. But we all know there are parts of Miami the tourists never see, and the members of the chamber don't see them either. They'd be afraid to go there, because they've heard about what goes on—the murders, the robberies, the muggings, the rapes. The shop owners know, and parts of this town are like an armed camp.

  "Sure, people watch Miami Vice while they're sitting comfortably at home in their reclining chairs, but they really don't think about the crimes they see on their TV screens. They think about what a hunk Sonny is, or what pretty girls those are in their bikinis, or how blue the water is.

  "And all the time it's rotten underneath, in the places nobody ever sees. Nobody but the cops, that is, and you guys ought to know. You can't fight people who make war like this"—he waved a hand to indicate the bodies lying in front of them—"with Miranda rights and the Constitution. The people who do things like this don't give a damn about rights, anybody's rights. They take what they want, they kill who they please, and they dare you to stop them.

  "That's why you need somebody like us right now, somebody who can fight them on their own ground, who can give them back exactly what they're giving out, and who doesn't have to answer to a mayor or a city council about what happens while I'm doing it."

  Stone stopped. It had been a long speech, but it had been building up inside him. Someone had to do whatever it took to find Jack Wofford.

  Rosales looked at Allbright. "We need to talk."

  Allbright nodded.

  "You can't be serious!" Williams exploded. "You can't really be considering letting this maniac have a free hand."

  "Shut up," Rosales snarled.

  He and Allbnght walked a few paces away and put their heads together.

  It was still raining lightly, and Hog thought he could see steam rising off Williams. It was probably just an optical illusion, though, he figured.

  Rosales and Allbnght came back.

  "I'm going to take a chance on you, Stone," Rosales said. "Care to make a deal?"

  "Deal, hell," Williams snarled. "Rosales, you and these men are interfering with a government operation—"

  "We are a government operation," Stone informed them quietly, nodding to himself and his men.

  "What the hell—" Allbright snorted.

  Stone then showed his presidential authorization to these men without further ado; the ID and accompanying letter that stated that Mark Stone and his team were indeed on Uncle Sam's payroll.

  Each man studied the authorization and passed it to the man next to him.

  Bass whistled when his turn came. "Damn, this is from the top. Operating out of Fort Bragg, yet. A regular fucking commando team."

  Williams had studied it longer than anyone.

  "I plan to check this shit all the way to the top," he snarled. He spun and stalked off, followed by his D.E.A. men. Rosales turned back to Stone, not unamused at Williams's chagrin.

  "Okay, you guys, split. But, uh, about that deal, Stone. Stay in touch, huh. Allbright and I've got jobs to do, too. You could help."

  "Understood."

  "Good. Now get out of here before I let my good judgment get the better of me and change my mind."

  Stone and the team climbed in the van.

  "You didn't really mean that, did you?" Loughlin muttered.

  "What's that?" Stone asked.

  "That we'd tell him every move we make."

  Stone smiled. "I didn't say that. I said I understood."

  Chapter Fourteen

  The orange-and-black-painted moving van, about which Stone had neglected to tell the police, moved carefully through the gray dawn, never exceeding the speed limit, always obeying all the traffic signs. Although Feliz was wounded, as were several of the men in the trailer, the driver had been ordered to take no chances on being stopped.

  Finally the van came to a halt in front of a warehouse deep in the barrio, a warehouse almost identical to the one to which Wofford had been lured for the phony drug deal. It was, in fact, only about two blocks away, and of the same cheap construction. Even the graffiti was similar, but in this case the name painted on the building was KRAZY KATZ, in a shiny Day-Glo orange.

  The moving van stopped in front of a huge corrugated iron door. The driver punched a button under the truck dash, and the massive door began to rumble upward. The van moved inside, and the door rattled down behind it.

  The inside of the warehouse consisted of a vast open space, with a small office area built next to the wall on one side. Enrique Feliz climbed awkwardly down from the truck cab and hobbled to the office, where there was a telephone. He called the doctor that he generally used to treat bullet wounds, a man who liked the money and could keep his mouth shut.

  Then he called Ramón Flores.

  "It went well?" Flores said.

  "Not entirely. But well enough. We need to talk."

  "Fine. Where?"

  "At the warehouse."

  "I can be there in an hour," Flores said.

  "Good." Feliz hung up the phone and sat in one of the desk chairs that furnished the room to wait for the doctor.

  "You really think Stone will do what he says?"

  Allbright and Rosales had dumped Williams and his D.E.A. men at their headquarters and were now alone.

  "I didn't make any deals just to irritate that Williams, if that's what you mean," Rosales told him.

  Allbright shook his head. "That's not exactly what I mean." He grinned. "But I wouldn't blame you if you had."

  "Yeah, he really is an asshole. But the local guys aren't so bad. I don't know why that Williams has such a bug up his ass."

  "Those Washington guys are always like that. Think they've got something to prove."

  "I know all about macho," Rosales said. "It's not just that."

  "I guess not. But what about the deal?"

  "All right. I think Stone will tell us what we want to hear and then do exactly what he wants to do. He doesn't give a damn what we think, and he won't let us get in his way."

  "
I sort of got that impression, too."

  Rosales stared ahead, not necessarily at the traffic. "I did check him out a little bit, you know. So it's more than an impression."

  "But you made the deal anyway."

  "That's right."

  "Why?"

  "Because what he said makes sense."

  "Yeah, I was afraid you might say that."

  "You didn't think so?"

  Allbright was all seriousness now. "Yeah, I did. That's what's bothering me."

  Back at the safe house, Hog was eating, Loughlin was sleeping, and Carol was in front of the computer keyboard.

  Stone was pacing the room like a caged tiger. "There's got to be something," he said with repressed fury. "Some link, something. There has to be."

  "If there is," Carol said wearily, "I can't find it."

  "Keep trying. It's there. I know it is." Stone's frustration was mounting with every passing second, because as the clock ticked away Jack Wofford's time grew shorter. Stone had to find him, and find him soon.

  One of the things that bothered Stone most of all about the situation was its very familiarity. It reminded him uncomfortably and too much of the situation of prisoners of war in Vietnam, or at least of the ones who were left behind at the war's end. Often when a camp was sighted, the prisoners would be moved, sometimes within hours of the sighting. By the time a rescuer like Stone could reach the camp, the prisoners were gone and so was any hope of locating them again.

  He knew that he had come within minutes of finding and saving Wofford. He knew that Crazy Charlie must have been moving Wofford to another location, probably after hearing about the death of his father.

  Now there was no sign of either Charlie or Wofford, and someone else had attacked Charlie's estate.

  Stone sat down in a wheeled swivel chair and rolled over beside Carol. "We need to talk this out."

  She looked away from the screen. "Talk what out?"

  He explained his theory about what had happened at Charlie's place. "Now, the question is, who was responsible? The most logical choice? Enrique Feliz. Judging from the reports we've tapped into, the police believe that Charlie was behind the drug ambush earlier tonight. Now Feliz is getting even."

  It sounded right to Carol. "But where are Crazy Charlie and Jack Wofford now? There was no sign of them when we got there."

  "I'll give you a logical answer again," Stone said. "That doesn't mean it's the right one."

  "It's better than no answer at all."

  He nodded. "Here goes, then. Let's accept the first premise, the one that says Charlie was behind the raid. Okay?"

  "Fine. I believe it."

  "Then there has to be a reason for it. Remember when we first got here that you told us Charlie was ready to take back the drug dealing from the Cubans?"

  Carol nodded. "I remember."

  "That massacre was his way of driving a wedge between the Colombians and the Cubans, making each side distrust the other and more likely to deal with him. Particularly the Colombians."

  "That sounds right, too. Perfect, in fact."

  "But to do any good, we have to take it a step or two further."

  "Go for it. You're doing great so far."

  "Well, we have to consider that just hitting Crazy Charlie might not be enough to satisfy either Feliz or the Colombians. Feliz needs something to win back their trust."

  "I see where you're going now," she said. "Stop me if I'm wrong. Feliz doesn't kill Charlie or Wofford. He grabs them. Now he can turn them over to the Colombians. Wofford shows Feliz's good faith, and Charlie is the sacrificial goat. I imagine he has ways of making Charlie admit to the earlier ambush."

  He reached out and touched her face. "I like the way you think, beautiful. I couldn't have said it better myself."

  "It was you who got the ball rolling. I just caught up with you at the end there. But I think you're right. What other scenario could explain everything so well and not leave any loose ends?"

  "I can't think of one."

  "So we must be right."

  "Or close. But . . ."

  "What?"

  "Even if we are right, what good does it do us?"

  Stone slammed his hand down on a table and made a monitor hop. "Not one damn bit. We're right back where we started."

  "I'll keep looking," Carol said. She turned back to the keyboard.

  Wofford had passed out again when they moved him to the back of the trailer. Now he was coming out of it. He could see the men crouching around him, men with guns. He thought about the major with no name again.

  They were taking him back to the camp again!

  He sat up suddenly, looking wildly around him. Someone shoved him roughly back down.

  The doors of the trailer opened. Jack looked out into the empty warehouse. He knew that he wasn't in the jungle. His mind was tortured and disoriented from the drugs he'd been fed in the last couple of days, but after the first instant of flashback he was beginning to find his way in the world of reality.

  Hands reached for him and dragged him across the floor of the trailer, then threw him on the concrete floor of the warehouse.

  "Tie him up," someone ordered. His arms were jerked behind his back and his hands were bound together with rough rope. Someone tied his feet, as well.

  He saw all the men with their machine guns and guessed that he was in the hands of the Cubans. From what he could remember, he had been held by another group previously. He was being swapped from one group to another like a pawn.

  He vaguely recalled the questioning he had undergone, or at least the beginning of it. The needle in his vein.

  The hell of it was, he didn't have anything to tell them. He didn't know anything. He had been out on the street, as usual, setting up buys, but he hadn't really hit with anybody, hadn't found out any names that would be of interest to his bosses.

  That was just the way the game was played, he guessed. Sometimes you got lucky, and sometimes you got unlucky.

  He had been lucky for a long time.

  Now his luck had run out. He had tried to tell Williams, tried to tell him that it was too soon to work Miami again. Maybe Williams would feel a little guilt about that.

  Maybe not.

  Either way, it wouldn't do Wofford any good. Someone, somewhere had recognized his face and turned him over to the Cubans, who had sold him to someone else. Now he was with Cubans again.

  They dragged him over against a wall and casually tossed him there to make himself as comfortable as he could.

  Wofford had no illusions about what was going to happen to him eventually. The Cubans made no attempt to blindfold him, to conceal their faces, to silence their talk.

  Such behavior meant only one thing. Whatever he saw, whatever he heard, would make no difference. They were going to kill him.

  Well, they could try.

  People had tried before, and failed.

  Not this many people, true, but there was always a chance. Who could say? Maybe the cavalry would arrive in the nick of time and perform a heroic rescue.

  Wofford smiled at the thought, then shook his head ruefully.

  He was in the wrong movie.

  "Well?"

  Carol had motioned to Stone to join her at the monitor. "I have a location for Feliz," she said. "But I don't really think it does us any good. Surely he wouldn't be stupid enough to take Charlie back to his own home, not after all the shooting that's gone down."

  "I don't think so either. That's the best you can do?"

  Carol hated to admit defeat. "For now it is."

  "What about that moving van?"

  "What about it?"

  "We didn't get the license number, but I remember the name of the company that was on the side."

  "You really think that they'd be using a legitimate van for something like that?"

  Stone knew he was reaching, but it was the best thing he had. It was the only thing. "Sometimes these guys are in legitimate businesses. It's at least a possibility."r />
  "All right, what was the name?"

  "Florida Movers."

  "I'll put it in the computer and see what comes out." Her tone was not encouraging.

  "It's a shot," Stone said. "At least it's a shot."

  Carol's fingers tapped away on the keyboard.

  Flores arrived at the warehouse in time to watch the doctor work on Feliz's wounds. There were others who were much more seriously wounded, but Feliz demanded that he be attended to first. He was the jefe, after all.

  "The hand is probably much worse than the hip," the doctor was saying. "Bites from human beings can be toxic you know."

  "No, I didn't know," Feliz growled. He nodded in acknowledgment as Flores walked into the office.

  "Oh, yes. It's quite true. In fact, in a recent court case a prisoner with AIDS was convicted of assault with a deadly weapon for biting a prison guard." The doctor looked at Feliz. "The man who bit you was not infected with the AIDS virus, I hope?"

  "Jesús, I hope not!" Feliz spat. "What are you trying to do, scare me to death?"

  "Just considering the possibilities," the doctor told him.

  "Yeah, well, just clean me up and forget all that other shit."

  Taking the hint, the doctor worked silently, carefully cleaning the hand with alcohol, then giving an injection. "To deaden the hand. I'm going to stitch it."

  He waited for the deadening to take effect, then went to work.

  Feliz gritted his teeth and didn't watch as the needle went in and out of his skin. Sweat beaded his forehead.

  "There," the doctor said. "Now let's look at that hip."

  Feliz had to drop his pants, an awkward process with one hand, but he managed it. The doctor helped him to remove his shorts.

  "No, not bad at all. Merely creased the flesh. I'll just clean it out, give you an antibiotic. That should take care of it. No need for more stitches."

  "Good," Feliz said. There was a clear note of relief in his voice.

  After the doctor was finished, Feliz turned to Ramón Flores. "I've got a little present for our Colombian friends, but there's a problem."